In seventh grade, there was only one girl who spoke to me on a regular basis. She addressed me as “dork-face.” I shall call her Most Popular.

She was middle school cute, somehow making the best out of her awkwardness. While other girls seemed clunky, her sturdy, cross country legs were a pre-cursor to my idea of feminine shapeliness. Middle school popularity has a lot to do with looks, but she reached the upper echelon of popularity because of her boyfriend. They were like celebrities, basking in the glow of peers who wanted to be just like them. I was so envious of what they seemed to represent to each other: confident, stylish, mature. Plus, they got to make out during lunch and rumor had it that he would put his hand up her shirt on the weekends. What must it have been like to touch Most Popular in that way? I sure as hell wasn’t going to find out.

I was skinny like a flagpole with protruding arms and legs. My ears were as big as bed sheets flapping on the clothesline. My teeth were crooked, but I refused to get braces. I had glasses, but I refused to wear them. Senses and appearance impaired, I grouped in the darkness of insecurity for some sense of security and meaning. Not everyone provided illumination in my search.

Upon seeing the two love birds walking hand-in-hand across campus, my ancient, cigarette-smoking, history teacher remarked to me:

“Ah, young love! Look at them; they’re not aware of anyone else in the world.”

I looked up at her and thought about how much her breath stank.

I had recently starting having nocturnal emissions, waking up in the middle of the night thinking that I had wet the bed. With increasing frequency, a boner would mysterious arrive in my pants and I would have no idea what to do with it. My dad told me that it stuck up like that in order to enter a woman’s vagina; again, not helpful! My body was waging a successful revolt against my mind like hairy men storming the gates while small children played dominoes in the castle tower. Caught up in this feudal attack known as puberty, I was just trying to get through each day without my erection taking center stage at the expense of my dignity and self-worth. I certainly did not need to hear old people wax philosophically about the obvious!

Most Popular and I sat together in this stinky, old crone’s class. Fittingly, Most Popular was ends oriented, reduced to tears over the rare “B” grade she received. I meekly assisted her quest for perfection, performing the menial tasks and then allowing her to copy the answers from my busywork. Over the semester, she began to recognize my slavish devotion to her academic success. She began to call me “dork face.”

Out of the watery chaos, YAHWEH created life. Like the ancient Israelites, all adolescents are just trying to make some sense of their surroundings that seem all too often vindictive and cruel. In the chaos of middle school, the popular students (who may as well be divine) impose their creative will on their surroundings. “Dork face” was her way of stating that I served her in a specific capacity in a certain environment. I was to have no false preconceptions about our relationship. Like Job, I was not permitted to question to the mind of the Creator. She cast me in a subservient role and I worshipped her just for acknowledging my existence.

On one of the last days of school, my entire class assembled on the football field for the sole purpose of signing yearbooks. I was huddled over by one sideline, pretending to laugh at the lewd jokes my friends wrote in each other’s yearbook (there were some terms that I didn’t understand).

Suddenly, I saw Most Popular approaching. Two of her popular friends walked on either side, as if she needed an escort to cross the social segregation into the strange and weird side of the field where my friends lived. They marched up to me and, before I could croak a salutation, she had seized my yearbook and signed it with great gusto. With a smile, she spun on her heel and went back to her boyfriend in her world.

I stared down at the page she had signed. With big, round letters she had scrawled the following across the page:

Thanks Dork Face! Have a great summer!

Now, these were holy words!
Tingles coursed up and down my spine, as I read and re-read her words of acknowledgement. Written just for me, they were a smile from the divine middle school goddess. Maybe someday, I would be alright. Maybe even today.

One of my friends, who had been reading over my shoulder, started making fun of my nickname. I bristled, reddening slightly and retorted in defense of my faith:

“Oh yeah!?!? I’d hate to think of what she would call you, jerk face!”

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